Unison offers a unique solution to help homebuyers purchase their home; company provides up to half of the down payment to purchase a home and stands to benefit if the home value increases; product is available in 13 states with 8 lenders and the company is close to one thousand deals completed with an anticipated three thousand additional deals in 2017; chairman and co-CEO Thomas Sponholtz answers other questions about the platform from Crowdfund Insider. Source
In Latin America's highly concentrated banking industry, financial technology startups are venturing into one of the region's most undeveloped and tightly held loan markets: mortgage financing.
Revolut will now offer its customers investment at property platform Bricklane; investors can invest in Bricklane tax efficient individual savings accounts for a minimum of 100 British pounds ($122); Bricklane investors receive rental income and capital appreciation from the properties they invest in. Source
Acre Homes aims to build a modern home ownership experience, and with the help of data from Plaid, applications are a breeze. Learn how.
OfferPad is a real estate platform to help homeowners sell their homes; investors include private funds managed by LL Funds, LLC and an investment management firm in Philadelphia; company plans to expand to additional markets; similar to competitor Opendoor, OfferPad buys homes from homeowners; current markets include Phoenix, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Tampa and Orlando; the company has 100 employees and will launch in Los Angeles soon. Source
LendInvest's retail bond began trading on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) this week, with the offering raising GBP50 million ($65 million) and promoted as the first to be issued by a fintech company; the underlying assets in the bond portfolio include property loans issued by the LendInvest platform; Christian Faes, co-founder and CEO of LendInvest, said: "We launched the bond program to make our asset class available to retail investors through an LSE listed offering because it is a well-established, robust structure that offers customers considerable protections. However, whilst the bond was popular with retail investors, some of the city's largest institutional investors also made significant investments."; the retail bond is the first in a multi-year GBP500 million ($650 million) bond program for LendInvest. Source
There have been many bank partnerships with marketplace lenders however there haven't been any done with real estate crowdfunding platforms; Allen Shayanfekr, CEO of Sharestates, predicts banks will partner with real estate platforms in 2017; says banks could lower costs and require less investment in new products by partnering with real estate platforms; Allen Shayanfekr outlines three types of scenarios for partnerships including: bank as originator, bank as capital provider and white labeling. Source
Marketplace lender, PeerStreet, has raised $15 million in a funding round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz; PeerStreet offers secured real estate loans through its lending platform; the minimum investment is $1,000; investors on the platform include high net worth individuals, family offices and institutions; Andreessen Horowitz's Rampell noted the competitive advantages of PeerStreet compared to competitors included their fast growth and distribution model; he stated, "Most companies that are lending to consumers spend all the money in customer acquisition and it is very hard to get a profit." Source
Chris Lustrino talks with the cofounders of PeerStreet in a blog post interview on Simple.Innovative.Change; Brew Johnson talks about how his legal experience with real estate and work on a tech startup with his brother led him to found the platform; additionally, both founders discuss the PeerStreet platform and its innovative market positioning. Source
Fundrise has announced a Regulation A investment offering of Rise Companies Corp. which is the parent company of the investment platform Fundrise, LLC; the campaign is currently in a solicitation phase which its website says has generated interest of over $58 million from more than 4,350 users; the investment offering circular was initially filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 29, 2016; some details from the most recent amended offering circular include the following: offering of one million shares of Class B non-voting common stock, offer and sale of the shares is limited to investors who have purchased investments on the Fundrise platform. Source